...inside the random mind of the willed man in wheel chair...bursts of simple ups and downs of the struggling life as breathed out on a typical layman's perspective...

December 27, 2012

Osteoporosis

What
exactly is osteoporosis? The standard World Health organization (WHO)
definition is that osteoporosis is “a skeletal disorder characterized by
compromised bone strength predisposing a person to an increased risk of
fracture,” which is certainly a mouthful, if not a particularly enlightening
one. Osteoporosis is the most common bone disease by far, but it’s a disease
many people don’t understand.

Most
people think of osteoporosis only in terms of bone fractures or loss of height,
but osteoporosis is far more complicated. You’d probably understand
osteoporosis most clearly if you could see a bone specimen affected by
osteoporosis under the microscope, but you’re not likely to ever be privy to a
bone biopsy. Doctors don’t usually perform bone biopsies in their patients to
diagnosis osteoporosis, although pathological examination of bone is still the gold
standard in diagnosing osteoporosis. Normal bone has a network of strong plates
and bands. In osteoporosis the bands become thinner and weakened, and worse yet
there are tiny breaks in the plates and bands.

Another
way to define osteoporosis is that osteoporosis is present if bone mineral
testing value is more than 2.5 standard deviations below the average adult,
even if there’s no history of fractures. The word “osteoporosis” actually means
porous bones. If something is porous, it has holes in it. Although all bone has
cavities filled with cells and blood, in osteoporosis, the normal bony cavities
enlarge. When the “holes” become larger, bone becomes more fragile and more
susceptible to breaking. Minimal trauma can cause a fracture when you have
osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis
is a systemic disorder that affects the entire skeleton. Bone is in a constant
state of remodeling; old bone is broken down and replaced with new bone.
Osteoporosis can occur when you lose more bone than you rebuild, or when more
bone than normal is broken down.

Bone
mass decreases between 1 and 5 percent per year after age 40 in women, and less
than 1 percent in men. Women are more likely to develop osteoporosis because
they generally have less bone mass to start with than men do. The sudden loss
of estrogen, a sex hormone that is instrumental in building healthy bone, in
menopause also contributes to women’s increased risk of osteoporosis.